EGGS?!

[beakycheekie]

So I've always had boy birds. Eggs are not something I have experience with. All my budgies are boys and my cockatiel Herman is a male. I took in Kiwi tiel from someone who was rehoming her a couple of months ago. He said that she was 5 months old at the time, so she's supposedly about 7 months old now. I adopted Peaches tiel about a week and half ago, she's said to be 8 years old. The girls and Herman are separate from each other. When I was cleaning the girls' cage tonight I found an egg on the floor of the cage! I was really surprised because I've never seen that before, but we've also never had night frights before Peaches, either so I assumed it was just another thing she did and didn't think too much of it after a few minutes. I had Kiwi baby tiel out playing on the couch with me. She started burrowing into my sweatshirt and being really determined to get inside. I opened it up and she crawled under it and proceeded to lay an egg!!! She's only supposed to be 7 months old, isn't that too young to be laying eggs? And is there anything I need to watch for, do I need to monitor her in any way? She seemed very tired afterwards and was closing her eyes and standing funny and I almost called the emergency vet clinic but now she's acting totally normal, eating, preening and walking around on her perches. I need some advice/input from other people with female birds, this is normal this time of year, right?

[Wolf]

I do not have cockatiels, but it is my understanding that it is not unusual for them to reach breeding age in their first year of life. Cockatiels do have a preferred breeding season but they are also opportunistic breeders, which means that if conditions are good enough they can breed at any time of the year.
The only real factors that we can control to try and prevent them from breeding and/ or laying eggs all year long is to control their lighting so that they are kept to a solar light schedule and the other thing is to control their diet on a daily basis. The only other thing is to make sure that they have enough calcium in their diet and to make sure that they have enough exercise through flight as they use the same muscles for flying as they do in laying eggs.

With your bird laying eggs, it brings us to the questions of what are you feeding your birds daily, what sort of lighting are they receiving, how much flying exercise do they get daily and do they have an extra source of calcium available to them.

I would give her a place in her cage to lay her eggs in and after freezing or boiling the egg and after it either warms up or cools down to room temperature put the egg in the plce that you provided so that she will stop producing eggs when she reaches the normal number for a single clutch of eggs. I would also get some dummy eggs for her so that you can simply replace the real eggs with the fake ones.

[beakycheekie]

Ok, thanks Wolf. I'm still feeding them solely a seed mix because I'm trying to get them adjusted to change slowly. If you remember, I introduced TOPS Napoleans mix a week or so ago and they had a hard time with it. So, the girls are getting the cockatiel seed mix they were used to combined with the TOPS. The mix they were used to was just a typical seed mix that you find commercially available. Since they are only eating seed it's probably too much protein, stimulating hormones I would guess. As far as solar schedule, I open the blinds and expose them to dawn each day. They do stay up until I do, so usually about 9 they go to sleep. I would put them to bed earlier but due to space constraints in my home at this point they have to be in the living area. Pretty soon it won't be until 8:30-9:00 that sun sets so that will be ok. I did give Kiwi a cardboard box to play in recently. I turned it upside down and cut a little door and she loved going in and out of it, chewing on the edges. That's where I found the first egg. Should I not have done that, is that what has caused her to lay eggs (having a "nest")?

[Pajarita]

Well, there's your answer. Feeding a rich diet and giving them long days = breeding season She might be a bit older than 7 months but it seems to me that captive birds mature earlier than what the books tell us - personally, I think it's the handfeeding formula combined with our forcing them to leave the nest too early and the long days that does it.

Now, giving her a box does promote her laying because, in essence, you have provided a nest for her BUT tiels would lay even if they have no nest so it's not this in itself that did it.

Unless she has been getting a vitamin/mineral supplement regularly, I would get myself some Calciboost ASAP and give her a couple of dosages before she becomes eggbound because a seed diet will do that every time (no calcium or vit D3 in it)

[beakycheekie]

Gah, ok!! I'll get a supplement right away. Are there any warning signs of egg-binding that I need to watch for? It isn't one of things where they look fine in the morning and then you come home in the evening and they're dead is it?
Maybe I need to start transitioning to the gloop sooner than I was planning to!

[Pajarita]

There are symptoms and, sometimes (not always), if you catch them early enough, you can save them but even when you do, their kidneys always take a real bad hit from it so preventing eggbinding is the way to go. If you have to wait long for the avian liquid calcium, go to a pharmacy and get a human liquid calcium with vit D3 in it and add some to her water.

The symptoms are: fluffed up bird, going to ground, walking funny, straining without producing anything, panting, etc -basically, the poor animal is in severe, severe pain and discomfort (they cannot poop)

[beakycheekie]

Oh jeez, this is stressful. Ok, I ordered the calciboost and it's supposed to come tomorrow. After Kiwi laid the egg in my lap she was standing and walking funny and would stop and close her eyes and yes, it did look like straining! But then she went back to normal after a couple of minutes and seemed totally fine this morning. I wonder if I can bring her to work with me tomorrow so I can keep an eye on her during the day. I hate thinking of her being unsupervised all day but I also don't want to stress her out by taking her back and forth to some place that is unfamiliar to her.

[liz]

Trying to lay an egg is like a woman in labor. It hurts. Women can have false labor which is labor pains that go away. Our very first bird was an old single cockatiel who did not want to be alone when she laid an egg. She would call my Momma to sit and talk to her while she rocked back and forth until she laid an egg. Amy was the first cockatiel and I knew nothing about them. We never knew her age or anything. My sister gave her to Momma for Christmas even though Momma was saying no. I don't know how long my sister had her.